


The Man Who Loved Death

by genkisakka



Category: Saiyuki, Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 17:54:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3258989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genkisakka/pseuds/genkisakka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After centuries, Death finally finds the one soul he thought was forever out of his reach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man Who Loved Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kikyo and enchanter for the 2014 7thnight_smut Dreamwidth community exchange

Kenren stood atop a hillock and surveyed the vast, rolling field that was his duty to reap. The grassland was littered with bodies, the detritus of some battle fought for an unknown cause, though Kenren guessed the cause was probably resting his corpulent bottom on a silk-covered throne somewhere several days journey away. He curled his black-gloved fingers tightly around the hilt of his holstered dagger and began his descent.

As he approached the fallen soldiers, Kenren noticed that while many were clad in full plate or chain mail, an alarming number had been protected only by chest plates and arm guards. The advance corps, most likely, Kenren thought, all ridiculously young. Most of the figures barely twitched, but there were quite a few that had not yet succumbed to oblivion. They writhed, they screamed, they cursed, they begged for salvation. After a few centuries as Reaper, Kenren no longer really heard their words as anything more than background buzzing. The only thing that still troubled him was the stench. As a former general of the Aetherial army, Kenren had seen plenty of carnage during the Chthonic Wars. But the smell of mortal death was different – rotting meat and rust and iron overlaying the acrid odor of pain-fueled despair and regret. It would have spoiled his appetite, if he still had one.

He worked quickly, using his black-bladed dagger to swiftly sever the silver thread tying each spirit to its shell of blood, flesh and bone, then tethering the cut end to the long ash-gray staff lashed to his back. There it would remain until his reaping was done and he transported all the gathered souls to the Wheel, where they would be redistributed as the arbiters saw fit. The vast majority would be reborn as mortals, though a few would possibly be judged worthy of proceeding to the first plane of Aetheria. Kenren supposed this batch might produce one or two soldiers who had fought well enough to attract the notice of the celestial military. It wasn’t a thought he relished.

The sun was low in the sky by the time Kenren made his final circuit of the battlefield. His gleaning staff dug into his back, heavy with the weight of reaped souls, and his eyes were starting to blear from the constant scanning to and fro, looking for anyone he may have missed. His persistence was rewarded by the discovery of another group of dying soldiers tucked behind a particularly steep hillside set apart from the main site. Most of them were nearly gone, their spirits stretching toward the horizon, eager to be freed from their failing bodies. This actually made Kenren’s task a little more difficult, since it was far more difficult to tether such a spirit once its connection was severed from its mortal form. There had been times, early in his tenure as Reaper, when a restless soul had escaped his grasp and wreaked havoc on the mortal plane - or worse, hurtled into Aetheria unescorted. Kenren shuddered, remembering the penance he’d been forced to offer for those errors.

He held tightly to each of these spirits, wrestling them onto the staff in a way reminiscent of how he used to break wild paegasi to the halter long ago, in another life. Unlike the faceless, nameless soldiers he’d reaped on the main battlefield, Kenren was in contact long enough to feel an impression from each of these souls – a face, a name, the sight and feel of a loved one, a dying wish or regret. It was something his fellow Reapers had warned him about. “Don’t hold on to them for too long,” Homura had advised, “else they will haunt your dreams.” Kenren had laughed at the idea of one of the harbingers of Death dreaming, back then.

Despite Homura’s cautions, Kenren could not help keeping inventory of each of these souls. A sturdy young female soldier, Lianne, whose young brother had cried as she rode away with the conscripting force. A delicate young man, Behare, who had been sent as a messenger to summon reinforcements when he was felled by an enemy’s morning star. A mail-clad squad leader with silver streaks winking through the blood matting his dark hair whose soul was particularly keen to escape, forcing Kenren to pull off his glove and call his power from the Aether to guide the spirit to the staff. The feel of the soul against his bare fingers set Kenren’s teeth on edge and sent him spiraling into the man’s memories -- kissing his family goodbye, feeling his wife’s slender fingers threading through the curls at his nape. “Come home to me, Nieva,” she had whispered, and he had kissed her eyes and tasted the salt of her tears.

Kenren wrenched himself out of the image and tapped the hand holding the spirit against the smooth surface of his staff, where the enchantments placed on the wood bound Nieva’s soul fast. Kenren could feel his strength ebbing, and was grateful there was only one body left. He knelt beside it and reached for his dagger with his ungloved hand.

And froze in astonishment when a hand grabbed hold of his bare wrist, and a voice whispered --

“Please… please don’t take me…”

The man who gripped Kenren’s wrist was older than the average advance force soldier, though his skin was still unlined. He had a beautiful face, with fine, high cheekbones and a shapely mouth, from what Kenren could see through the blood bubbling through his lips. His hair lay in glossy black tendrils over his face and shoulders, having sprung loose from its bindings. Kenren felt a shiver of something like recognition dance down his spine.

“My wife. I have to get back to my wife,” the man gasped, his green eyes holding Kenren’s own. “Please sir, spare me.”

Kenren glanced at the man’s torso, which had been slashed open with a particularly nasty, jagged cut, his intestines all but spilling out of the wound. Kenren knew the chances of the man surviving were infinitesimal – Kenren had not been dispatched until all those with a chance at survival had been retrieved by the healing brigades.

The man squeezed Kenren’s wrist. His hands were elegant, with soft skin and long, tapered fingers – the hands of an artist or scholar, not a soldier. Kenren felt that shiver again, and for the first time in his tenure as Reaper, he found himself speaking to a mortal –

“Your wounds are beyond the ability of your healers to mend,” Kenren said. “Is that not why you were left behind?”

Kenren gently tried to pry the man’s fingers from his wrist, but the man clenched them tighter. His eyes flashed.

“They discount my will to live,” he said through gritted teeth. “I must return to Kanan. I must keep my promise to her.”

Kenren could feel the man’s body failing, its systems shutting down. He had to be in unimaginable pain, yet his determination to survive was unwavering, Kenren thought with some admiration. Still, his course of action was clear.

“She will understand,” he said, voice infused with a calming enchantment. “For now, let me free you from this agony.”

The man’s hand on his wrist grew slack and Kenren slipped free, lowering the knife toward the man’s spirit-tether. Just as Kenren was about to make the cut, the man gave a guttural roar and grabbed the knife by its blade. Kenren yanked it free, marveling at how much strength the dying man exhibited. As they grappled for the blade, the fresh blood from the cut on the man’s hand trickled onto Kenren’s bare fingers, and Kenren fell to his knees.

It was one of the first things Kenren had been taught: never lay bare hands on anything or anyone in the mortal world, with human blood being at the top of the list of things to avoid, though no one had been able to tell Kenren exactly why or what ill effects could result. Another one of those paradoxical mysteries he had found darkly amusing, that those who dealt Death reportedly could not tolerate the touch of life’s blood.

Kenren now understood what they had not, as he suddenly found himself completely immersed in the soul of Cho Gonou, scholar to nobles and teacher to their children. He felt every one of Gonou’s experiences, from the moment he’d received his death blow to the moment he’d emerged from his mother’s womb, then slid even farther back, to when Gonou’s spirit rode the Wheel. The man’s past lives opened up from there, a spider’s web of lives as farmer, hunter, healer, merchant, soldier –

And Kenren dropped his knife as the life of the soldier – no, the marshal - dovetailed with his own.

“Tenpou,” he breathed, inhaling the remembered scent of tobacco and wine and sky-blossoms. His head felt feather-light, his heart like the fluttering of a moth’s wing. After all this time, he had finally found the one soul he thought was forever out of his reach. The blood-vision that had gripped him faded, and he quickly wiped his hand clean on the grass.

Cho Gonou had spent the last of his strength in his grab for Kenren’s knife, and had slumped back to the ground, blood oozing from the wound on his stomach and trickling from one corner of his mouth. Kenren could feel Gonou’s spirit pulling against its tether, ready to be cut free and brought back to the Wheel, where it would be absorbed and released, and Kenren would never see it – see **him** \-- again.

There wasn’t much time. Kenren pulled his glove back on and carefully gathered Gonou in his arms. The power he used to call wayward souls to him served to quell Gonou’s restive spirit as Kenren glided through the fields and over a ridge, where he sensed the golden energy employed by mortal healers. Kenren made sure to hand Gonou over to the one whose power burned brightest.

“He was speaking until a few minutes ago,” Kenren told the healer, whose lips had pressed thin at the sight of Gonou’s stomach wound.  
“We will do what we can,” she said. “Wait outside, if you wish. I will update you as soon as I can.”

Kenren wanted desperately to stay, but the souls on his staff were restless, and he needed to restore his own depleted energies. He simply nodded and exited the pavilion, then slipped through the fold between the mortal world and his own.

+++++

 

It was almost two months before Kenren saw Gonou again. After Kenren had returned from that fateful meeting on the battlefield, the Keepers of the Wheel had noted his exhaustion and ordered him off duty for several days to recover. When not sleeping and dreaming of Tenpou, Kenren walked the grounds of the Reapers’ Keep, picturing Tenpou sprawled beneath the sweeping pine trees, flashing a sly, secret grin that held the promise of hours of carnal delight. As a Reaper, Kenren had thought himself far removed from the pleasures he had enjoyed during his life in Aetheria. He was heartened to discover that wasn’t quite the case.

Of his fellow Reapers, Kenren spoke most often with Homura, and would almost call him a friend, if not for his venomous disdain for all things Aetherian. Homura was a half-breed, born to a Aetherian general who had a secret liaison with a Chthonic poet. His mother had tried unsuccessfully to escape to Chthonia with Homura and his father, but the Keepers’ enforcers had caught them near the fold. Kenren still remembered the eloquent poem Homura’s father had read before his beheading. Homura’s mother had refused banishment to the Wheel, insisting she be given the same sentence as her beloved. Homura was taken for the Reapers shortly afterward.

“You look much better,” Homura commented the day Kenren finished his leave. “I had feared I might knock you over with a breath.”

“Your breath could knock over multitudes by stench alone,” Kenren countered with a smirk. “Have you been eating raw raebats again?” Raebats were a reported delicacy among certain Chthonic tribes.

“No, but I have tasted the sweet flesh between your mother’s thighs,” Homura grinned. Kenren laughed at the ribald gibe, which he hadn’t heard since his military days. Homura would have been a good fit with his battalion on Aetheria, Kenren thought. He knew from sparring with Homura that he was a strong, clever fighter, quick on his feet and deadly with a saber.

Kenren adjusted the straps connecting his black breastplate and shoulder-guards. “I hope you did not feel my absence too keenly,” he said, pulling on his gloves.

“Nataku was all too willing to pick up your slack,” Homura said with a grimace. Nataku was the youngest of the Reapers, and his stoic demeanor and ice-cold efficiency at his job prompted the others to give him a wide berth. Kenren knew the reason for Nataku’s detachment, but it was better for them both to leave it unspoken.

Kenren was kept busy for several weeks after his return. The Wars of the Twelve Kingdoms continued to feed the Wheel, and an outbreak of plague in the southern wilds added still more souls to its spokes. There was no opportunity for Kenren to follow up on Gonou until finally, at the end of another taxing day, the Keepers ordered him off duty until they sent for him. Kenren knew he was taking a risk not returning directly to the Keep, but the opportunity to visit Gonou was too good to let slip by.

Kenren used his power to trace Gonou from the site of the battle where they had first met back to the duchy where he served as the duke’s personal scholar, as well as instructor to the children of the duke and his highest-ranking lords. The duchy was defended by a tall, thick wall around its borders, but Kenren noticed a conspicuous lack of guards stationed on its battlements. The war was taking its toll on security, it seemed. Kenren used an enchantment to mask his presence and slipped through the gate with a line of supply wagons.

Life inside the walls seemed untouched by the conflict. Merchants displayed their wares along the main street, calling out to passersby to come and look and taste. Children chased each other around the stalls and up the side streets, teasing and laughing and shouting. Men and women, young and old, strolled along the thoroughfare, shopping and greeting each other and chatting. Looking closer, however, Kenren noticed that many of the people on the street were missing eyes or limbs. The battle-scarred were all around him, having paid a heavy price to return safely home.

As he drew closer to the duke’s estate, he could sense Gonou’s spirit just inside the main gate. Kenren found him sitting ramrod-straight on a stone bench next to a pond covered with floating paper lanterns. Each of the lanterns bore a name, carefully inked on its side, well above the water line. Gonou had cropped his hair short, and Kenren admired the way it emphasized the graceful lines of his long neck. He stared at the lanterns, but his eyes were focused somewhere beyond. Kenren’s heart gave a painful twist, knowing grief when he saw it. He sat on the other end of the bench and lifted his masking enchantment.

Gonou inhaled sharply. “You have returned,” he said, eyes still fixed on the pond.

“Yes,” Kenren replied. He started to reach for Gonou’s hand, pulled it back before it could make contact.

Gonou turned to face Kenren. “I am ready,” he said. “Take me to Kanan.”

Surprised, Kenren shook his head. “That is not why I’ve come,” he said.

“I don’t care,” Gonou said. "She is gone, and I no longer have a reason to stay here. Take me to her.”

Kenren shook his head again. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “It is not yet your time.”

Gonou made a grab for the knife sheathed at Kenren’s side. Kenren fended him off easily. “Let me do it,” Gonou said, his voice edged with desperate pleading. “Now, while the guards are at the mess and I am unobserved.”

Kenren was thankful the duke had enough foresight to instill a watch over Gonou. “I did not spare you so you could cast your life aside like an old coat,” he said sternly. “You chose to live, now you must live with that choice.”

Gonou hissed a breath between his teeth and turned his attention back to the pond. His posture was still upright, but Kenren could see his entire body vibrating with furious tension. He could now see the lantern with Kanan’s name, bobbing gently next to a spent lotus blossom.

“If you are not here to claim my soul, then why did you come?” Gonou’s voice trembled slightly on the last few words.

“I wanted to be sure you were well and whole,” Kenren said.

Gonou glanced sidelong at Kenren. “A rather odd thing for Death to do,” he remarked.

Kenren suppressed a chuckle. It was exactly the kind of thing Tenpou would have said. “I suppose that’s true,” he replied. He paused before asking –

“How did she…?”

Gonou looked puzzled. “You do not know?”

“I am not Death’s only harbinger,” Kenren said.

“It was a raid on a town outside the wall,” Gonou said. “She was bringing supplies to the school there when the bandits came.” His voice turned bitter. “It was an errand I usually ran.”

Kenren clasped his hands in his lap to keep from touching Gonou. “I am truly sorry for your loss. You clearly loved her well.”

“You are Death,” Gonou said with some heat. “What do you know of love?”

Kenren closed his eyes, seeing Tenpou’s smiling face as they marched him to the Wheel. They had been given barely a minute to say farewell, and Kenren had spent half of it kissing Tenpou, committing the touch and shape and taste of his mouth to memory. The words he had always held back tumbled from his lips.

_“I love you, Tenpou Gensui,” Kenren whispered in his ear, in his hair, against his neck._

_Tenpou cradled Kenren’s face in his hands and smiled. “We will meet again,” he vowed._

Kenren stood up. “I will take my leave,” he said over his shoulder. “May the coming days bring you some peace.”

“Wait.”

Kenren turned. Gonou was standing and staring and chewing his lower lip, a gesture Kenren found uncomfortably alluring.

“Since that day, on the battlefield,” Gonou said, his voice low, “I have had some… unusual… dreams.”

Kenren felt his pulse race. Just as he was about to ask Gonou to elaborate, the clarion call of the Keepers vibrated within him. “Damn them to the subterrans,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I must go,” Kenren said.

Gonou nodded. “Will I see you again?” he asked. “ I mean, will you come… will I see you before I die?”

“You will see me well before that,” Kenren replied and masked himself once more.

Kenren was as good as his word. A few weeks later, he was strolling the grounds of the duke’s estate, this time clad in the simple gray robes of a traveling monk. He grinned, imagining how Tenpou would have mocked him thoroughly for choosing a disguise so opposite to his nature. He wondered if Gonou had any of Tenpou’s absurdist sense of humor, hidden beneath his grief.

The guard at the gate had informed him Gonou was giving the duke’s sons their lessons in the south courtyard. Kenren was amused to see that said lessons consisted of unarmed combat training. It seemed Gonou was more than a scholar after all. He was wearing a loose-fitting green tunic and pants, and his feet were bare. The older of the two boys was circling him warily, arms cocked in something approaching an offensive stance. He made a move toward Gonou, and his teacher had him pinned face-down on the ground within seconds. The younger boy hooted.

“Shut up, Ling.” The older boy’s growl was muffled by the ground.

Gonou pulled the older boy to his feet. “It will be your turn soon enough, Ling,” he said with a sly smile. His resemblance to Tenpou in that moment made Kenren’s breath catch. Gonou spotted Kenren and his eyebrows shot up.

“That ends today’s lessons,” he told the boys. They bowed to their teacher and scrambled down the paved path leading to a side entrance to the duke’s residence. Gonou approached Kenren with a slight smile.

“You could not have chosen a more inappropriate disguise,” he said.

“What about that of a priest?” Kenren inquired, straight-faced.

Gonou chuckled. His eyes were still red-rimmed and heavy with sorrow, but Kenren could see a bit of spark flickering in their depths. “You’ve not been sleeping,” Kenren said.

Gonou shrugged slightly. “It is difficult, becoming used to sleeping alone,” he said.

“And have you been eating well?” Kenren could see that Gonou’s cheekbones had grown more prominent in the week since he’d last visited.

Gonou smiled and shook his head. “A harbinger of Death, worrying about my health. It’s more than a little strange.”

Kenren shifted and looked at a point somewhere over Gonou’s shoulder. “I have never spared a soul on my list before,” he admitted. “Now I know why it is frowned upon in my circles – it conveys a sense of responsibility for that soul going forward.”

Gonou gestured to a bench facing a carefully arranged display of rocks, shrubs and succulents. As Kenren took a seat, Gonou said --

“It’s more than that, is it not?” Gonou scrutinized Kenren’s expression, which he endeavored to keep neutral. “That day, when my blood touched your hand… you recognized me, did you not?”

Kenren weighed his next words carefully. He wanted to tell Gonou everything, but a calm, reasoned voice with him – Tenpou’s voice – cautioned him to go slowly. “You do know that this life is not your first,” he said.

“I am familiar with the concept of reincarnation,” Gonou said, “though my faith does not incorporate it.”

“Ah, you are a monotheist, then?” Kenren had to smile at the irony.

Gonou shrugged. “I am a scholar,” he said. “I know that for every thing I know, there are multitudes that I do not.”

Now **that** was Tenpou. Kenren continued –

“My kind are keepers of the great Wheel of Life, to where all mortal spirits are sent after death, and reborn anew.”

“We come back to this plane?” Gonou’s mouth puckered in distaste. “If that is the truth, I would prefer my faith’s comforting falsehoods about ascension.”

“Transition to the Aetherian plane does occur,” Kenren said, “once a soul is judged worthy.”

“Ah, that sounds like my faith,” Gonou sighed. “I fear I would fall short of the mark, there.”

“Most do,” Kenren said, with more contempt than he’d intended. Gonou raised an eyebrow, but did not probe further. “So my Kanan has likely been reborn elsewhere on this plane,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Could you find her?”

Kenren shook his head. “That is beyond my powers.”

“Yet you found me.”

“That is because of our connection,” Kenren said.

“You mean, from before?”

Kenren did not reply. He had already said too much. Gonou broke the silence.

“I have seen you in my dreams,” he said. “We wore gleaming silver mail and carried flaming broadswords, and we cut down countless soldiers bent on destroying us. We were comrades in a past life, were we not?”

Kenren swallowed. “Yes. Comrades,” he said.

Gonou nodded. “How did you become Death, then? Was that your ‘ascension’?”

“Punishment, more like,” Kenren muttered as the call of the Keepers thrummed through him. He rose and bowed to Gonou in the manner of his young students. “I must take my leave.”

Gonou rose as well. “When will you return?” he asked. The question sent a completely different vibration through Kenren’s being. It had been so long since his company had been desired.

“Whenever I can,” he said, “if you wish it.”

“I do,” Gonou said with a smile. “I find our conversations… comforting.”

Kenren returned the smile and slipped into the fold.

+++++

 

“Something has changed with you.”

Kenren glanced at Homura, who was studying him closely. “I cut my hair yesterday,” Kenren said. “Thank you for noticing.”

Homura snorted. “You are happy,” he accused.

Kenren spread his arms wide, taking in the wide lawn where they had been sparring. “Who would not be, with all this before him?”

“It is unseemly.” Homura’s tone held a note of warning.

Kenren made a show of schooling his expression into one of grim resolve. “Is this more appropriate?” he asked. Homura chuckled and clapped a hand on Kenren’s shoulder.

“Take good care,” he said. “Our masters are ever-watchful.”

Kenren grinned and tapped a finger against his temple in a sort of salute. Homura shook his head and, with a rueful smile, disappeared into the fold. Kenren waited a few moments before following him. He had finished a grueling three-day reaping – an earthquake in the northern mountains – and was looking forward to a leisurely visit with Gonou, whom he had not seen in nearly two weeks. Their friendship had blossomed over the past year, with hours stolen at the end of missions and, once, an entire evening during which Gonou had told Kenren the story of his mortal life, and Kenren had shared some anecdotes from their time together with the Aetherian army, though he told the stories as if they had occurred on the mortal plane. Gonou would sometimes mention his dreams, most of which were quite tame compared with Kenren’s own.

His most recent dream had been a recollection of his last coupling with Tenpou, a desperate, passionate rutting in an alcove of the abandoned building on the borderlands where they had sought refuge after freeing young Goku from the enforcers’ prison. Kenren remember how Konzen had slept sitting up against a wall, his normally pristine robes covered with blood and dust, and the purring rumble of Goku’s soft snores rising from where his head was cradled on Konzen’s lap. At his moment of climax, Kenren had dared to believe they would all escape together into Chthonia, and that he and Tenpou would be able to live a peaceful, self-determined life. They woke the next morning to the enforcers blasting through their defensive enchantments.

Kenren willed the memory away as he strode into the back garden adjoining Gonou’s apartment. The guard on watch nodded, having become accustomed to seeing Kenren in his gray monk’s robes. “A good evening to you, brother,” the guard said.

“And to you,” Kenren said, raising a hand in what he hoped approximated a gesture of blessing. He had not really done much research to bolster his disguise, despite Gonou’s urgings. Scholarship had never been his strong suit.

Gonou was sitting on the porch, clad in the plain white robe he wore most evenings. Instead of the usual teapot and moon-cakes, the small table next to him contained a squat clay jug, accompanied by two matching cups. Kenren felt the same frisson of energy he had when he had first recognized Gonou, a combination of memory and longing that nearly knocked the breath from his body.

“This is new,” he said, taking the empty seat opposite Gonou. “Since when does the scholar drink?”

Gonou poured a milky rice-based wine into Kenren’s cup, then his own. “I thought it might make a nice change,” he said, flashing what Kenren privately called Tenpou’s smile – a sly quirk of the lips that made it clear he was keeping secrets. That smile never failed to make Kenren want to relieve Tenpou of his clothing as quickly as possible. He forced away that thought and held up his cup.

“A toast to warm summer evenings spent with good friends,” Kenren said.

“Agreed.” Gonou touched the rim of his cup to Kenren’s. After they had drained their drinks, and Gonou had refilled their cups, Gonou observed –

“Both moons are out tonight in full.” He gestured toward the sky, and Kenren took a moment to admire the ghostly glow of the twin satellites.

“So that is why everything is almost day-bright here,” Kenren said.

“We call it ‘twin-glow’,” Gonou said. “It happens only once every 10 years or so. I was a child when I saw the last.”

“After you lost your parents?” Gonou’s mother and father had both served in the duke’s army – his father as a healer, his mother as a squad commander. They died in the same battle.

Gonou sipped his wine. “The night of their burning, actually,” he said. “I still remember the moons rising over the pyre, as if conjured into being by the flames.”

“You should have been a poet,” Kenren said. Gonou laughed at that.

“Kanan once told me the same, in the early days of our courtship.” Kenren was pleased to see none of the shadows that usually fell over Gonou when he spoke of his dead wife. His expression was merely one of fond remembrance. He drained his cup, and Gonou refilled it almost immediately. The wine slid smoothly over his tongue, sharp and fragrant. It stirred memories of endless warm nights with Tenpou, sipping post-coital liquor brewed from sky-blossom seeds and sharing a slender pipe filled with contraband tobacco from the World Below, the soft Aetherian breezes sliding over their bare flesh.

Kenren noticed that Gonou’s eyes had lost a bit of their usual sharp focus. “The scholar is becoming drunk,” Kenren teased.

“He is,” Gonou said with a wide smile. “Does mortal wine affect Death?”

“Fortunately for you, it does not.” Kenren picked up the jug and poured himself another portion, over Gonou’s protests. “You are my guest,” Gonou said, his voice blurring on the last word.

Kenren made a dismissive noise. “After a year’s worth a visits, I can hardly claim that status,” he said, adding no more than a splash to Gonou’s outstretched cup. “No more for you, Master Gonou. You will need your wits about you tomorrow.”

Gonou closed his eyes. “Astronomical lessons,” he groaned. “Those boys are no more interested in the heavens than I am in the records of the great general Zhao they worship so fervently.” They both laughed, toasting the general Kenren had never heard of and draining their cups. Gonou set his down and stumbled to his feet.

“Come. I have something to show you,” he said, gesturing to the door. Kenren raised an eyebrow, but followed Gonou inside without comment. He had only been inside Gonou’s apartment twice, and had been charmed by how orderly and spotless it was. Tenpou had had many talents, but housekeeping had not been among them. Kenren suppressed a snort of laughter, remembering the one disastrous time he had tried to help Tenpou organize his towering stacks of texts. It had ended in Kenren buried under what he swore were several tonnes of books, and Tenpou apologizing through fits of laughter.

Gonou led Kenren to his tiny study and picked up a rolled canvas resting on the desk. He unfurled it, and Kenren’s heart stuttered. It was a painting done in various shades of gray, of a spreading sky-blossom tree, with two figures entwined beneath. The sight spread through Kenren like a shot of strong liquor, and he grabbed hold of the back of a chair to keep from sinking to his knees.

“We were more than comrades,” Gonou said, his green eyes glimmering like jewels in the filtered light of the twin-glow. “Much more.”

“You remember,” Kenren breathed.

“Not everything,” Gonou said, setting the painting on the desk and moving toward Kenren. “But enough.” He stood on tiptoe and arched his neck, brushing his lips against Kenren’s jawline. The contact made Kenren groan.

“Gonou,” he whispered, eyes closed.

Gonou kissed the hollow at the base of Kenren’s throat. “Please,” he murmured, “call me Tenpou.”

The feel of his name whispered against his skin swept aside any inhibitions Kenren might have harbored. _This is a spectacularly bad idea,_ he thought as he cupped the back of Tenpou’s neck and kissed his slightly open mouth. He tasted of wine and menthe and some heady, sharp spice with a metallic tinge, and Kenren groaned again, feeling like a starving man set before a table laden with delicacies. It was all he could do to refrain from tearing Tenpou’s robe open and ravishing him where he stood. As if reading Kenren’s thoughts, Tenpou pulled back just far enough to release his sash and let his garment slip to the floor.

“Come to my bed,” he said, taking Kenren’s hand and leading him across the hall. Kenren’s robes hit the floor as soon as the bedroom door clicked shut, and he sank to his knees before Gonou… no, Tenpou… the only thing Kenren had ever loved, in this or any other lifetime. He pleasured Tenpou with his hands, then his mouth, drawing each moan Tenpou emitted into himself like breaths of fresh air, and swallowing his spend like the sweetest of wine. He mapped every inch of his lover’s mortal flesh with his lips, relishing each sigh, each pleased murmur his actions elicited.

“Let me ride you,” Tenpou rasped, and it was Kenren’s turn to lay back and thrill to the sensation of slender fingers stroking his skin, teeth nipping at his collarbone and nibbling down his chest, a wet, eager mouth engulfing his erect cock. Every touch of Tenpou’s body intensified their bond, until Kenren as no longer knew where he ended and Tenpou began. Their hands gently stretched Tenpou, their necks arched backward as Tenpou lowered himself slowly onto Kenren, their fingers twined as they moved together like waves on land, rising and peaking and receding with the waning moons. They lay together afterward, silent and sated, Gonou’s cheek pillowed against Kenren’s chest. He raised his head enough to meet Kenren’s eyes.

“Tell me what happened,” Gonou said. “How did I end up here?”

Kenren brushed Gonou’s bangs aside. “We tried to save a boy,” he said, “and broke the law.”

“I can almost picture him,” Gonou said. “He had unusual eyes… like molten gold.”

“And enough energy to power ten thousand forges,” Kenren said.

“Goku?”

“Yes, that was his name.”

“Why would saving a boy break any laws?”

Kenren regarded Gonou gravely. “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked. “Maybe not remembering it is a blessing.”

“Not to me,” Gonou said firmly.

Kenren laughed softly. “A scholar’s answer,” he said. “All right, then.”

As the moons set and dawn began to creep over the horizon, Kenren told Gonou of how Aetheria had controlled birth and death in the World Below for so long that it seemed to have always been so. The only contact between the mortal plane and Aetheria was through the Reapers, agents dispatched by the Keepers of the Wheel to gather mortal souls after their flesh had expired and return them to the Wheel, where they would be born anew on the mortal plane until such time as the Keepers judged them worthy of entry into Aetheria. However, as time spun onward, bored and curious Aetherians began slipping into the World Below, where at first they simply observed mortal life and brought back tokens with which to amuse themselves. Then, a few millennia ago, the Keepers dispatched a Reaper to retrieve not souls, but an Aetherian artist who had been secretly consorting with a mortal. The artist had been fascinated by the complex system of channels and aqueducts employed in the cities of the southern reach, and so had initiated a conversation with their architect. One meeting became three, then six, then the artist and the architect began sharing a bed as well as a drafting table. The architect was now with child, and the Keepers had sensed the Aetherian essence growing within her.

“It is just as the southlanders used to tell me,” Gonou marveled. “Gods consorting with mortals.”

“Except we are not gods,” Kenren said darkly. “No matter how much the Keepers may insinuate otherwise.”

This was the idea proffered by a growing number of Aetherians, who confronted the Keepers when they announced the artist would be banished to the mortal plane for her transgression. “What transgression?” their leader, Amas, had shouted during the sentencing. “For daring to love a mortal? Or for having the temerity to create a child combining both our worlds?”

The Keepers feared neither – what truly terrified them was the idea of losing power over both Aetheria and the World Below. If Aetherians were free to come and go below as they pleased, forging friendships and relationships and life-partnerships with mortals, what was to stop them from challenging the Wheel itself? Aetherians were not immortal, but their lives were an eternity compared with the spark that was a mortal’s existence. The more they bonded with mortals, the more they would resist the Wheel’s principle of death and rebirth and insist that their mortal beloveds join them in Aetheria.

The rebel faction managed to free the architect, and traveled with her to an undiscovered plane somewhere between Aetheria and the World Below. She gave birth to a son, the first of what the expatriate Aetherians dubbed the Chthonic race. After they sent word throughout the known planes of existence that there was a new realm, Chthonia, where Aetherians and mortals could live together in peace, the Keepers vowed to destroy it. They drafted all able Aetherians into the military and created a team of elite soldiers they called their enforcement division.

“The wars went on for centuries,” Kenren said, stroking Gonou’s hair. “So many dead… so many lives wasted. I was an eager soldier at first, but the years of battles without progress made me increasingly cynical, even as I continued to rise through the ranks. When the Keepers announced they had chosen to promote me to enforcer, I politely declined their invitation. They threw me in the special enforcers’ cells and tried to convince me to reconsider.”

“That’s where you met Tenpou, isn’t it?” Gonou said, running a finger in lazy circles around Kenren’s chest.

Kenren smiled. “He told me he had to get a good look at the man who was either dumb or obstinate enough to resist the enforcers,” he recalled.

Gonou closed his eyes. “And what did you say?”

“I told him I was both, and neither,” Kenren said. _I’m just a guy who wants to get paid, get drunk and get laid,_ he’d told Tenpou, and the marshal had laughed until he wheezed. He still had no idea how Tenpou had managed to get him out of the enforcers’ grasp and installed as general of Aetheria’s Western Army. Tenpou had been quite the canny political manipulator back in those days. That, of course, changed after he met Kenren. He closed his eyes against the familiar sting of regret, and Gonou tweaked his nipple, making Kenren yelp.

“None of that,” Gonou admonished. “We all made our choices, and the past is unchangeable. What matters is now.”

Kenren noticed the light in the room had brightened with the rising sun. “I must go,” he said, sliding from under Gonou and summoning his Reaper’s armor from the Aether. Gonou reclined on his side, stretching like a satisfied cat, his pale skin dappled with rose in the morning light. It was almost physically painful to turn his back on the sight.

“You are being summoned?” Gonou said, his voice like warm honey spreading over toast.

“Yes,” Kenren lied. If what Homura said was true and Kenren was being watched, then he had already been gone too long.

“But you still haven’t told me about Goku.”

Kenren tugged on his gloves. “Next time,” he promised. When he turned back, he found Gonou standing a finger’s-width behind him, hair rumpled, smelling of musk and sunlight. Gonou gave Kenren that sly smile, and Kenren cursed before pulling him roughly forward.

“I will not risk your safety,” Kenren said after they broke the kiss. He pressed his forehead to Gonou’s. “I will not risk losing you again.”

Gonou sighed and gave Kenren a playful smack. “Go then, my Death,” he said.

Kenren grabbed Gonou’s hand and kissed it. “Say my name,” he ordered in a low voice.

Gonou smiled. “My Kenren,” he said, prompting another round of kisses and caresses.

“I will return within the week,” Kenren vowed. “Sooner, if I can manage it.” This time, he slipped backward into the fold, so that Gonou was the last thing he saw before returning to the keep.

+++++

 

A few more weeks passed without incident. Kenren dared to relax, dared to think that all would be well, that he could spend his days as Reaper and his nights as lover to the mortal who had once been Tenpou, with no one the wiser. He had told Gonou of how Chthonia had managed to call a truce by promising to seal the rift between their plane and Aetheria, which would prevent them from accessing the World Below through the Aetherian fold. Kenren spoke lovingly of the peaceful days that followed, of parties and pageants and tournaments that grew out of retired soldiers’ desire to swing swords and ride the joust without harming their opponents. Gonou had fed him wine and chilled grapes as Kenren related the story of their fall from Aetheria -- how Nataku, once Aetheria’s youngest and most deadly soldier, now permitted to be a child once more, had met a Chthonic boy playing in a field of daisies near where the rift had once been. When Nataku asked how the boy had gotten there, he had replied, “Walking,” and held up a crown of flowers. “My name is Goku, and this is for you,” he had told Nataku, and with that, a most unlikely friendship was born. Nataku managed to keep Goku hidden for less than a week before they had played a prank on the wrong person – the dour yet stunningly handsome Konzen Douji, chief scribe to the Emperor and nephew to Kanzeon, the self-described “Merciful Goddess.”

“I think I remember Konzen calling her the ‘Meddling Goddess’,” Gonou had laughed, and Kenren had used his mouth to feed grapes to Gonou, prompting a lengthy intermission in the story. He finished it during their next meeting, describing how first Konzen, then Tenpou had been drawn into Goku’s orbit, how somehow Goku had managed to charm the charmless Konzen, and how Kanzeon had been so delighted by this development that she took Goku into her personal custody, secreting him in her temple and cautioning him not to leave the building. Of course, marble walls could not contain Goku or Nataku, and after a number of escapades, the two were finally spotted climbing a sky-blossom tree, on the hunt for baby hummingbirds. The spy, who happened to be Nataku’s father, informed the enforcers, then ordered Nataku to kill Goku upon their arrival, so that Nataku could join the elite force. Nataku refused, going so far as to cut his own arm rather than harm Goku, and in his despair, Goku’s Chthonic power manifested, turning him into a lithe, bestial killing machine.

Gonou held Kenren’s hand as he described what it was like for him and Tenpou to arrive at the scene of Goku’s rampage. Kenren tried to stop Goku, and got a bite to the shoulder for his trouble. Then Konzen arrived with Kanzeon, who was able to subdue Goku, but not before he had slain several enforcers. She told Konzen the Keepers would insist Goku be punished for this grave crime, that to release him would prompt them to re-open the rift and resume the war with Chthonia under the pretense that they had sent Goku to assassinate the Emperor. Konzen argued bitterly with her decision, going so far as to slap her across the face, then seize Goku and flee. Tenpou and Kenren had followed, and they had made it as far as the abandoned outpost near the rift when the enforcers overwhelmed them.

“I thought we would all end up on the Wheel,” Kenren said as they sipped tea on Gonou’s porch. “But the enforcers decided to make use of me as a Reaper instead. There were several large-scale wars breaking out in the World Below, and they needed the extra help retrieving souls.”

Gonou covered Kenren’s hand with his own. “I am so sorry,” he said.

“I am not,” Kenren replied, turning his hand over and lacing his fingers through Gonou’s. “We may never have found each other again if both of us were on the Wheel.”

Gonou smiled. They leaned in to kiss, but Kenren stopped short as two figures appeared out of thin air behind Gonou. Kenren sprang to his feet.

“No!” he shouted.

Homura scowled at him. “You don’t take a hint, do you?” he said. “I did everything but paint ‘Cease Your Visits to Your Mortal Lover’ on the walls, yet you persisted.”

Gonou was milk-white and trembling. Kenren stepped in front of him. “You have no idea who this is,” he growled, pulling his knife. Homura laughed at him.

“Do you really think that would help?” he smirked. “I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve bested me in sparring.”

Kenren flashed a knife-sharp grin. “I was holding back to soothe your fragile ego, boy,” he said, crouching in preparation.

“Stop this.” Nataku’s voice was almost mechanical. He addressed Gonou, who had stepped beside Kenren and taken an offensive stance.

“Cho Gonou,” he intoned. “I am here to collect you. You are to return to the Wheel.”

“I understand,” Gonou said, stepping forward. Kenren blocked him with an outstretched arm.

“I will not allow this,” Kenren said. “Not again.”

Nataku blinked. “I see,” he said. “You do know that as long as I am Reaper, I must fulfill my duty.”

Kenren tossed his knife from one hand to the other. “Go ahead and try,” he said.

Homura rolled his eyes. “Enough,” he said. “We are not exactly eager to throw the famous Marshal Tenpou Gensui back to the Keepers either.”

Both Kenren and Gonou gaped at Homura. “You know who I am – or was?” Gonou asked.

“I may not be the genius you were in your former life, but it wasn’t that hard to figure out,” Homura said. “Kenren has not looked this happy since the time I spied the two of you going at it against the wall of the Keep.

Kenren coughed, and Gonou blushed. Nataku cocked his head and blinked.

“We have a plan,” he said, in a voice that almost sounded human. “We are leaving Aetheria.”

“We are done being the Keepers’ lackeys,” Homura added.

Kenren’s eyes narrowed “Are you serious?”

Homura nodded. “Watching you these past months, seeing you come alive again, it made me think that it is past time a for a new world order,” Homura said. “What right does Aetheria have to pass judgment on anyone? What right do they have to determine who goes where?”

Gonou nodded. “All beings are entitled to self-determination,” he said.

“Spoken like Tenpou Gensui,” Homura said, slapping Gonou on the back so hard he stumbled. Kenren suppressed a smirk. Gonou had come a long way from the God-fearing monotheist he had been when they had first met.

“There are others that believe as we do,” Nataku said. “We will join them in Chthonia, then plan our strategy to overthrow the Keepers.”

“I thought there was no way to get into Chthonia other than the rift,” Kenren said.

Homura grinned. “That’s what the Chthonians wanted you to think,” he said. “We know another way, not far from here, in fact.” He held out his hand. “Are you coming with us?”

Kenren turned to Gonou. Before he could open his mouth, Gonou kissed him and said –

“Really, Kenren -- do you even have to ask?”

Kenren smiled. Tenpou had truly returned.


End file.
